


It's Always Like This

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Category: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008)
Genre: F/M, Marriage mixups and misunderstandings, Misses Clause Challenge, Post canon, When you wish for a heroic last moment reconciliation and perhaps a car chase
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:55:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8888194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: In WWII London, Guinevere rides again.  Or should we say dances.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LovelyPoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/gifts).



> With the alternate name “Dance duel! Dance dance duel duel duel! Dance!!!!”

_Miss Guinevere Pettigrew_  
_c/- Miss Holt Employment Agency_  
_84, Gower St_  
_London, W.C. 2_  
_England_

_15 October 1939_

_Well, Miss Pettigrew, I suppose you’ll be wanting to know that Michael and I made it back to New York alright.  We were supposed to get married yesterday at this lovely little church on Fifth Avenue, but there was a problem with the rent party upstairs crowding into the stair well and we couldn’t hear the service over the dancing and we got to swinging and then the police came and we all had to go to City Hall (it’s always like this) and talk nicely to a judge, he was such a sweetheart, he said I reminded him of his daughter - so we’re going to wait a couple of months for when we have some money in the bank.  But we met a lot of swell folks and now we have a gig in a little club in Harlem.  The club owner likes our version of “If I Didn’t Care” and we’re making it up from there._

_All my love and kisses,_

_Sarah Grubb (about to be Sarah Pardue!)_

Mrs Guinevere Blomfield opened out the fragile paper of a years’ old letter, its envelope still gaudy with bright stamps, and read it with a half smile.  She had never heard again from Delysia, nor particularly expected to – hummingbirds spend their strength in action, not remembrance – but it warmed her to remember that one incredible day.  She folded it back together, careful of its creases, and tucked it into her lingerie drawer with a beautiful blue scarf.  Gentle footsteps sounded behind her, and she turned, her half smile blossoming into pure delight, still after these several years.

“Coming, my dear Mrs Blomfield?” Joe asked, holding out his arm.

“Why, of course, Mr Blomfield,” she replied, failing to keep the purr out of her voice.

It was strange, she always thought, how much the Savoy Hotel hadn’t changed in poor blacked out London.  Joe took her there every so often, to dance, and to keep in touch with his industry friends, and somehow there was always pink gin and a dance band and good tea, although the company one kept was all that her straitened vicarage soul could have dreamed of in suspicions of espionage.

She moved smoothly through the crowds of saints and sinners, socialites and group captains, spies, diplomats, and humbler purveyors of socks such as her husband.  Joe kissed her neck and whispered that he had to talk to someone about a contract. She was picking her way to the buffet table when she heard a warm brown voice, once heard on that so memorable day two years ago, and never forgotten.

“Miss Pettigrew!” Michael exclaimed.

She turned, the smile creasing her eyes giving the lie to her stern admonition.  “It’s Mrs Blomfield, now, if you please.”

“Oh!” There was a squeak, and suddenly a small blonde woman was kissing her on the mouth and hanging around her neck.  “He did marry her!  I told you he sure would.”

“Michael and Delysia, as I live and breathe.  Mr and Mrs Pardue, I should say.  I am so very,” she blinked heavily and tried to tell herself it was from the smog of the day,” so _very_ happy for you.”

“Oh, we’re living in sin, Mrs B!  Every time I try to get her to a church, there’s a plague of clowns doing the conga, or a flood, or, or…” Michael frowned.

“Oh, you,” Delysia chided, “there were only clowns that one time, and there were only two of them.  And they were perfectly sweet.”  She rounded on Guinevere.  “But we really are living in sin.  Have you seen the engagement ring Michael gave me?  Isn’t it just divine?” The girl presented her hand and a cheap diamond ring for inspection.

“But why are you here?” she asked.

“Consider us part of the lend-lease,” Michael said cheerfully.

“Silly,” Delysia drawled.  “We’re not _really_ the lend-lease.  We’re USO.  We’re here to do Camp Shows.  Tomorrow we ship out to a training base in, in” she pulled some paper out of her pocket, “oh, that’s right, they didn’t say, we’re just supposed to be at Charing Cross Station at 7.”  She giggled.

Mrs Guinevere Blomfield née Pettigrew felt her hair, slowly but with inexorable certainty, begin to unpin.  As if on cue, the band finished its instrumental, the piano player finishing with a succinct bang.

“Oh, there’s my girlfriend Letitia, I simply have to show her my ring,” and before Guinevere could comment the young singer had rabbited off into the crowd.

“And how is New York, young Michael?”

“Oh, well, you know,” Michael shrugged, with what she realised with regret was a little dissatisfaction.  “There’s always something going on.  Delysia – Sarah, I should say.  Well, she always comes back.”

Guinevere tried to think of something to say when two hands suddenly emerged behind Michael’s head to cover his eyes and Guinevere blinked.  “Well, if this isn’t a sight for sore eyes, himself in living flesh.”  A face emerged behind her friend, the band’s pianist – a short and cheerfully plump woman with a slight gap in her teeth and a friendly Irish accent. 

Michael blinked as well, then grinned broadly.  “Sylvia Price,” he announced, “ _this_ is my good friend Mrs Guinevere Blomfield.  When she isn’t managing people’s love lives in the _best_ sense, she’s married to Joe Blomfield.” 

The two woman took each other’s hands briefly.  “And you, I take it, are a good friend of Michael’s?”

“Oh, we’re old partners, to be sure.  Up and down the north of England doing piano duels.  Do you remember that hall in Sheffield with that dreadful leak and the mice in my piano.”

“ _Our_ piano.  We swapped, don’t you remember; every time I hit a D flat I got a muffled squeak instead.”  He laughed, his face clearing like the morning after a summer storm.  Guinevere laughed as well, until she saw Delysia off and away on the other side of the ballroom standing straight and indignant, her lower lip trembling.  Michael saw her as well and sighed, his eyes squeezed shut, and added “it’s always like this.  Tell me more,” he said, rounding on Sylvia, “about this fancy hotel gig you’ve got.  Have your feet suddenly stopped itching.”

“Oh, away with you.  Someone has to keep an eye on you all in this little bit of an emergency.”

Around the chattering pianists the ballroom swirled with conversation, and Guinevere drifted slightly as she admired the bright colours of the women’s dresses amid the solemn black dinner jackets and the sober khakis, navy blues, solemn blacks and flash of scarlet of the serving military.  She had always loved going to movies for the outfits – there were tragicomedy and overwrought emotions, to be sure, men with guns and sinister plots about jewelled falcons, car chases, and mournful farewells at train stations.  There was all of that and poetry and love and rage, and all of it contained in a glamourous frock.  Sylvia Price here had a lovely green velvet number that showed her curves off splendidly and brought out the cream of her skin and the sparkle in her eyes.  Joe would approve, she thought, and bid the lady farewell as the Irishwoman headed off to her next set.  She looked around for Joe, hoping to show off young Michael, her brave boy returned from across the sea, but suddenly gasped at the looming grey hawk that emerged in her vision.  “A spy!”

“I’m no more a damn spy than the head waiter,” Calderelli said crossly.  “Miss Pettigrew, isn’t it?”

Nick Calderelli was greyer, thinner, and inhabited his suit jacket uneasily.  “Mrs Blomfield, now, actually.”

“I heard you’d been in prison,” Michael said uncertainly.

“Internment, please,” Calderelli said.  He held up his fingers and rubbed them together.  “And the right ears will still listen to reason.”

“Well, now, Nick,” Delysia had flounced back, every inch of her screaming Flirt With Me.  “How are things at the Peacock?  Did you find a new headliner as good as I was?”

Calderelli raised his craggy head as the band struck up a quickstep.  “Delysia, I believe after all we've been to each other I deserve a dance” and they were away.

As the two of them skittered away, Michael growled low in his throat.  “No.  I am not losing Delysia to that, that _cad_ again.  We’re dancing, Miss Pettigrew.”  Never before had Guinevere been as glad that Joe had arranged dancing lessons for her; she struggled to keep up as Michael swept into a fast advance across the floor trying to corner the other couple. 

The quickstep ended with a flurry of notes and Delysia spun out, breathless, to the middle of the floor.  The piano struck up a decided tango beat, the other band members catching up with the odd discordant diffident sound of musicians who were surprised by the change in set list.  Michael’s lips thinned and Guinevere quickly inserted herself between Delysia and Nick.  “Perhaps we could catch up on old times as well, Mr Calderelli.  Joe speaks about you often.” 

“Old times, Mrs Blomfield?  Hardly that I should think.”

“I’m feeling rather peculiarly fairy godmotherish, Mr Calderelli.”

“Peculiar, I will give you,” Nick said with a wolfish snarl.  “We still haven’t shared that cigar.” 

Delysia and Michael were hissing at each other through the pulse of the music and the careful step step slow of the dance and Guinevere felt a moment of vertigo as she spun around with Nick.  She wondered where Joe, _her_ Joe was in all of this – then realised why the piano had dropped out of the music: her husband was quietly presenting the band leader with a banknote and leading Miss Price out to the floor, as amiable as ever.  She watched Delysia slide into a long dip then come out to embrace Michael, her leg bent and high – rage made her ever more beautiful.  The music changed to the slow glide of a foxtrot, and she hung on tightly to Nick: he might be Italian and he might be crass, but she doubted the man would try to shake her off in the middle of a crowded ballroom. 

Her friends hissed at each other – Guinevere could hear fragments of their running argument: “you were smiling at the trombone player”, “if you hadn’t given our last dime to that hobo”, “every club owner thinks you’re flirting with him”, “we had to throw a _rent party_ because you made me give up that job” and more, the long grind of living together year on year.  She sighed.  “Am I boring you?” Nick asked, his big white teeth shining brightly.  “Well, we can’t have that.”  Then the dance band finished their foxtrot with a triumphant flourish and she was spun out to land suddenly in the strong arms of her dear Joe, back to the calm of a waltz.  As they circled the floor they compared notes:

“Delysia, I fear, still has some affection for her former beau,” Guinevere squeaked.

“Michael had a productive partnership with Miss Price,” Joe added.  “They separated when Miss Price went back to Dublin to care for her mother.  And I think, perhaps,” he turned her in a gentle spin, “there are some other tensions in the engagement of our American friends.”

“I suspect that Michael feels he does not always have his fiancée’s full attention.”  Joe spun her out into a gentle turn.  “An occupational hazard in the performing arts, I believe, but also quite wearisome.  And money, of course.”

They turned into a promenade in time to see Delysia, back in the arms of Nick Calderelli, suddenly laugh and wrap her arms around his neck.  Michael stopped cold, his face bleak as a Russian winter.  “Delysia, I can’t do this anymore.  I hope,” he swallowed, “I hope you are very happy.”

Delysia stood in the centre of the rapidly emptying dance floor as if lit by air raid spotlights as the love of her life shook his head and strode rapidly away, head down, hands shoved deep into his pockets.  Her lower lip trembled.  “Nick only wanted to tell me he was getting married.  Michael!” but her call went unanswered in the crowd of mildly curious partygoers.  “Michael!”

Guinevere sighed.  The illusion was lost: all these beautiful frocks were years old and worn, old dresses made over and taken out at the seams, a crumbling masquerade trying to pretend that everything was perfectly alright and always had been.  She took Delysia by the arm.  “Come on home, my love.  Tell me about what happened in America.”

***

Guinevere and Delysia walked through the streets of blacked out London.  It was time and past time for the bombers to return to Germany, and in the false dawn they shared the streets with milk trucks and fire wardens crossly telling them to go home to their beds.  “I might have lost him,” Delysia said in a small voice.  “To that Irish… Oh, who am I kidding.  I’m not the sort of person who gets happily ever afters, not like _you_ , Guinevere.”  They reached the platform where her train was due to leave and she smiled bravely.  “But he smiled when he saw me.  I’ll always have that.”  She pressed Guinevere’s hand hard, her grip clutched in the other hand, and climbed into her train. 

Guinevere closed her eyes hard.  She had wished, wished, _wished_ that the two of them might have had a movie romance, with a heroic last moment reconciliation and, perhaps, a car chase.  She looked up and put on a brave and cheerful face of her own to wave goodbye. 

As the train started to chug and the guard blew his whistle she heard a sudden revving engine and turned to see a car (her and Joe’s car?) racing through the deserted streets in a manner _quite_ inappropriate to the Road Code.  She grinned in sudden delight.  Michael hurtled out of the passenger door, paused for a moment to grab her by the shoulders and kiss her on the cheek – “Shite!” he announced and ran back to the car for his bag – and then he was off, running down the platform and taking a leap onto the step of the moving train.

“Sarah!  Sarah!!!” he hollered.  “Where _are_ you?” and Guinevere could see him bustling his way through the crowded carriage until he found his fiancée.  “ _There_ you are, Grubb.  It’s murder trying to get a special licence in the middle of the night, I can tell you.”

“You don’t mean…?” Sarah Grubb squeaked.

“You’re not getting away from me _that_ easy.  I’m not letting you out of my sight until I’ve got you firmly hitched.  Goodbye, Miss Pettigrew!” he shouted, and the train chugged away out of sight.

Guinevere felt a warm hand wrapping around her cold fingers.  She looked up, and leaned into the solid warm body of her husband.  “I couldn’t resist,” Joe said shyly, “the chance to play fairy godmother of my own.”

"Come along, my love," Guinevere said.  "It’s time for our breakfast."

**Author's Note:**

> “c/- Miss Holt Employment Agency” – I made up an address and tried to format it consistent with 84, Charing Cross Rd which was written shortly after the War. Apologies to any Brits who look at this and go “Eh?”
> 
> “We were supposed to get married yesterday at this lovely little church…” - A random historical detail, because why the heck not – according to Wikipedia Which Is Never Wrong (except when it is), a lot of churches in Harlem were ‘storefront churches’ operating out of an empty store, basement, or the bottom floor of a brownstone. A ‘rent party’ was a social occasion where tenants would hire a live musician, serve food, and pass the hat around to the guests to top up their rent money for the month. [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem
> 
> Wartime hotels – apparently the five ‘big’ hotels in London all managed to be their own private Casablanca, lots of partying, foreigners and suspected spying. (I figure that Delysia’s kind of people would be exactly the sort to care about the partying, at least.) <https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2011/oct/30/sex-politics-spying-londons-wartime-hotels>
> 
> Lend-lease – the programme by which the USA provided material and equipment to Allied forces during WWII (declaring it as a ‘loan’ was politically sounder than making direct gifts, although not much gear actually got returned.) <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease>
> 
> “Someone has to keep an eye on you all in this little bit of an emergency.” – Ireland was neutral in WWII and referred to the conflict as the “Emergency”. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_neutrality_during_World_War_II>
> 
> “I’m no more a damn spy than the head waiter.” – The Italian head waiter of the Savoy, Loreto Santarelli, was sent to an internment camp in winter quarters of the Bertram Mills circus in Berkshire, along with other Italian employees of the hotel. It took a lot of campaigning to get him released despite a general ‘Britishness’ about his outlook on life. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6651858.shtml ](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/timeline/factfiles/nonflash/a6651858.shtml)<https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2011/oct/30/sex-politics-spying-londons-wartime-hotels>
> 
> “He raised his craggy head as the band struck up a quickstep” – The quick step is a very fast paced and light hearted dance (adapted from the foxtrot and the Charleston) with a very syncopated rhythm. Some beautiful versions of it here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdfH9sMPlgA> and funny here: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osDemusH6UM>
> 
> Everybody pretty much knows what the tango look like, but for those who are interested, the basic rhythm is slow slow quick quick slow (two slow walks and a tango close). <http://www.ballroomdancers.com/Dances/info.asp?sid=240> But here are some pretties: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7XwK2ytJFQ> and the politics of queer tango in Argentina: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSuTejFPghI>
> 
> I always thought that foxtrots were old and fogeyish (probably because they’re the kind of dances my grandparents would have done) but I think we’ll replace those adjectives with smooth, elegant and fluid. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHFfvSoFeCk>
> 
> I had to look up a bunch of ballroom dancing clips for this story. Oh, the hardship. ;-)
> 
> Also, I didn't get a chance to put this in my story, but my head canon is that Guinevere has been wearing some very sober and sensible dresses (if beautifully made) and underneath had the most beautiful silk slips and petticoats an inspired underwear designer could come up with. (Access to sample bolts, don't you know.) I also have the head canon that while Delysia is an incorrigible flirt and always will be, by her lights, she's faithful to Michael.


End file.
